Stallman Family Blog

IN ANOTHER POST I EXPLAINED how preventing heart disease has very little to do with simply lowering cholesterol with statin drugs. Our current thinking about how to treat and prevent heart disease is at best misguided, and at worst harmful. We believe we are treating the causes of heart disease by lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, lowering blood sugar with medication. But the real question is what causes high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar in the first place. (i) It is certainly not a medication deficiency!

If you say your genes are responsible, you are mostly wrong. It is the environment working on your genes that determines your risk. In other words, it is the way you eat, how much you exercise, how you deal with stress and the effects of environmental toxins (ii) that are the underlying causes of high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. That is what determines your risk of heart disease, not a lack of medication.

The research clearly shows that changing how we live is a much more powerful intervention for preventing heart disease than any medication. The “EPIC” study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine studied 23,000 people’s adherence to 4 simple behaviors (not smoking, exercising 3.5 hours a week, eating a healthy diet [fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and limited amounts of meat], and maintaining a healthy weight [BMI <30]). In those adhering to these behaviors, 93% of diabetes, 81% of heart attacks, 50% of strokes, and 36% of all cancers were prevented. (iii)

And the INTERHEART study, published in the Lancet in 2004, followed 30 000 people and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease. (iv)

These studies are among a large evidence base documenting how lifestyle intervention is often more effective in reducing cardiovascular disease, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and deaths from all causes than almost any other medical intervention. (v) It is because lifestyle doesn’t only reduce risk factors such as high blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol. Our lifestyle and environment influence the fundamental causes and biological mechanisms leading to disease: changes in gene expression, which modulate inflammation, oxidative stress, and metabolic dysfunction. Those are the real reasons we are sick.

The good news is that by fixing the problem at its root results creates benefit for most chronic disease and it makes you feel more alive, healthy and has no side effects.

Exercise is a necessity, not a luxury, in preventing almost all chronic disease, from heart disease to cancer, from dementia to diabetes, from osteoporosis to osteoarthritis.

Disregarding the underlying causes and treating only risk factors is somewhat like mopping up the floor around an overflowing sink instead of turning off the faucet, which is why medications usually have to be taken for a lifetime. When the underlying lifestyle causes are addressed, patients often are able to stop taking medication and avoid surgery (under their doctor’s supervision, of course). Now I am going to tell you how to lower your heart disease risk as well as your cholesterol using a comprehensive dietary and lifestyle approach.

Dietary Recommendations to Help Prevent Cardiovascular Disease

The first step in preventing heart disease is to eat a healthy diet. Increase your consumption of whole foods rich in phytonutrients, plant molecules that give your body the nutrients it needs. Here are some practical tips:

To avoid the blood sugar imbalances that increase your risk for heart disease, eat protein with every meal, even at breakfast. This will help you to avoid sudden increases in your blood sugar.

Use lean animal protein like fish, turkey, chicken, lean cuts of lamb, and even vegetable protein such as nuts, beans, and tofu.

Combine protein, fat, and carbohydrates in every meal. Never eat carbohydrates alone.

Avoid all processed junk food, including sodas, juices, and diet drinks, which impact sugar and lipid metabolism. Liquid sugar calories are the biggest contributors to obesity and diabetes and heart disease.

Avoid or reduce alcohol, which can increase triglycerides and fat in the liver and create blood sugar imbalances.

Don’t allow yourself to get hungry. Graze — don’t gorge — by eating every three to four hours to keep your insulin and blood sugar normal.

Try not to eat three hours before bed.

Have a good protein breakfast every day. You can start with a protein shake or may use eggs. Some suppliers offer omega-3 eggs, which are ideal.

Include flaxseeds by using two to four tablespoons of ground flaxseeds every day in your food. This can lower cholesterol by 18 percent. Flax is tasty in shakes or sprinkled on salads or whole grain cereal.

Drink green tea, which can help lower cholesterol.

Use soy foods such as soymilk, edamame, soy nuts, tempeh, and tofu, which can help lower cholesterol by 10 percent.

Supplements are important. Along with a healthy diet and exercise program, they can dramatically affect your risk of cardiovascular disease. Combining these together can have the greatest impact on your cholesterol.

Here are the supplements I have found most useful in my practice to lower cholesterol and even prevent and reverse heart disease:

Everyone must take a good multivitamin and mineral, as well as a purified fish oil supplement that contains 1000 to 2000 milligrams a day of EPA/DHA. More may be necessary for those with low HDL and high triglycerides. (vii)

Plant sterols (beta-sitosterol and others) can help lower cholesterol. Take 2 grams a day.

Try policosanol (10 mg to 20 mg twice a day), which is from sugarcane wax and can help lower cholesterol. (ix)

A soy protein isolate shake can be helpful in lowering cholesterol by about 10 percent.

Fiber supplements such as WellbetX PGX (Konjac fiber or gluccomanan) — 4 before each meal with a glass of water — can both lower cholesterol and balance blood sugar metabolism. (x)

There are other suggestions and therapies, but these will work for most people. Working with a doctor specializing in nutritional therapy can help sort out questions or difficulties that arise.

Lifestyle and Exercise Changes for Heart Health

I encourage 30 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at least six times a week. You may try interval training (also known as wind sprints) if you are feeling stronger. I also encourage strength training to build muscle and reduce body fat composition.

Exercise is a necessity, not a luxury, in preventing almost all chronic disease, from heart disease to cancer, from dementia to diabetes, from osteoporosis to osteoarthritis. You cannot age successfully without it. It is how we are designed.

Stop Stressing Out Your Heart

Stress alone can cause a heart attack. It is often the trigger that leads to the cascade of events that causes that final, fatal heart attack. But all along the way, it contributes to heart disease by creating inflammation, raising your cholesterol and blood sugar, causing high blood pressure and even making your blood more likely to clot.

Therefore, finding ways to manage stress, to relax, and to find the pause button is essential for dealing with nearly all chronic health conditions, including high cholesterol.

Try classes, buy tapes, try therapy, or just go out and have fun. But you must do something to switch daily out of the alarm response to maintain your health.

Heart Medications

Occasionally I will recommend medications if I feel that my patient is swimming upstream genetically, or if there is significant heart disease present already. Then I can carefully weigh the risks and the benefits of medications.

However, it is possible to achieve most of the benefits of medications through lifestyle changes. Dr. David Jenkins from the University of Toronto compared treatment with statin drugs (the number-one cholesterol medication) to a diet high in viscous fiber, almonds, soy, and plant sterols and found they were equal, although the diet was more effective in lowering inflammation and homocysteine. (xi)

In fact, many of my patients have lowered their cholesterol over 100 points by following the comprehensive program I outline above.

In the rare occasions when I do need to use medications, here are the ones I have to choose from:

1. Statins – These work by blocking the production of cholesterol in the liver. They can also lower inflammation and very high doses may even reverse plaque or fatty deposits in the arteries.

Though now widely prescribed, statin medications do have significant side effects, in that they deplete the body’s stores of the vital component Coenzyme Q10. If you’re on statins, it’s a good idea to supplement with at least 100 mg of CoQ10 a day.

Many patients have to stop taking statins because of muscle pain and aching, known as statin myopathy. It is more common that most people think.

And you must have your liver function checked regularly and have your muscle enzymes (CPK) measured to make sure you can continue the medications safely. However you can have symptoms, pain, and muscle injury without having an abnormal CPK test.

2. Niacin – This is also known as vitamin B3, and in very high doses (1000 to 3000 mg a day) can be very helpful for raising good cholesterol (HDL) and lowering high triglycerides — something that statins are not very effective at.

I use niacin often in my patients who have insulin resistance or pre-diabetes. The major side effect is flushing (sort of like hot flashes), which are benign, subside after an hour, and reduce completely over a few weeks. You can stop flushing by taking a baby aspirin (81mg) half an hour before your take the niacin.

I usually recommend long-acting Niaspan and build up slowly over the course of 2 to 6 weeks to the desired dose of 1500 to 2000 mg daily. This needs to be done only under a doctor’s supervision.

3. Ezetimbe (Zetia) – This drug prevents absorption of cholesterol from the intestine. It can interact with the statins to increase the risk of liver toxicity. However recent studies have shown that combining Zetia with a statin actually increases plaque in the arteries even though it lowers cholesterol. Another reason to not assume that lowering cholesterol is what protects us against heart disease.

4. Fibrates – This class of medications includes drugs such as fenofibrate (Tricor) and gemfibrozil (Lopid) and helps to lower triglycerides and raise HDL. These drugs also act on a class of receptors that control inflammation and blood sugar called PPAR.

The verdict is still out on their effectiveness and safety. I prefer to use niacin, which achieves the same results, at lower cost with less risk.

5. Bile Acid Binding Agents – Drugs like Questran and WellChol bind up bile in the gut and promote the elimination of cholesterol from the body. Bile is comprised of cholesterol among other things, and getting rid of bile helps lower your cholesterol. These are somewhat difficult to take, and not often used.

Remember, cholesterol is only one of many factors that lead to cardiovascular disease, and it may not even be the most important one. Inflammation and insulin resistance or pre-diabetes are much more important. There are many causes. We have to look at all of them. We focus on cholesterol because it is what we have the best medication for. But remember if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

Comprehensive diet, supplements, exercise, and other lifestyle approaches can have a huge impact your risk of heart disease and can dramatically improve cholesterol. And this approach reduces your risk of nearly all chronic diseases.

Medications are available as a last resort, but I never start them without trying an integrated approach to cholesterol management and heart disease prevention. In fact, the cholesterol comes way down as a side effect of changing lifestyle. You often don’t have to treat it directly.

If you are willing to make the changes in diet and lifestyle and take a few supplements, your health, and your numbers, may change dramatically … and so will your life.

Now I’d like to hear from you …

Have you taken medications to lower cholesterol? Have you had any side effects?

About Mark Hyman, MD

Mark Hyman, MD, believes that we all deserve a life of vitality—and that we have the potential to create it for ourselves. That’s why he is dedicated to tackling the root causes of chronic disease by harnessing the power of Functional Medicine to transform healthcare. He is a practicing family physician, an eight-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in his field. He is the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He is also the founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Center, chairman of the board of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a medical editor of The Huffington Post, and has been a regular medical contributor on many television shows including CBS This Morning, the Today Show, CNN, The View, the Katie Couric show and The Dr. Oz Show.

15 Responses to How to Lower Your Risk Of Heart Disease Without Using Drugs

My cholesterol started to rise when I came into menopause. The doctor prescribed LIPITOR), whichI took for 3 years. When I suffered from muscle pains and memory lapses, I stopped. A couple of years later I went to an alternative Medicine Doctor and am now starting to make real lifestyle changes. I have high cholesterol, toxins (mercury and lead, at high dosis), actually only a few symptons, sinus congestions, sleep problems, food cravings and allergies, brittle nails and hear.

. I am realizing now, also because of your article that it is all inter-connected, the toxins and the cholesterol. I am genetically inclined to have high cholesterol because my mother did too, but while I did not think I ate badly, i did. I have a body mass index of 25,
at 5 6″ tall, never ate much fat, am a disciplined eater, eat fruit and vegetables, but I ate a lot of fish and in the last 5 years a lot of sushi.

The results of the heavy metal test and the high cholesterol have been a wake-up call. There is no heart desease in my family, but I seemed to be heading for trouble. I excercise at least 20 minutes every day, more often 1 hour, stretches, core strengenith, weight lifting and treadmill.

Until I started to eat better, I had little results, but my doctor tells me I will. My problems are reversible, she tells me.

very interesting read. I’ve got an above avg cholestrol reading. LDL is high but HDL and Trig in normal zones. I’m fit and slim for my age, exercise a lot in the gym and out, and done my best to reduce things like sugary drinks, chips, cholocate, ice cream etc; also take fish oil supplements, plant sterol margarine daily etc. You’d say my diet whilst not perfect is pretty good…and yet, I can’t get those damn readings down, and this is for over a yr now since I first realised my cholestrol was high.

In addition, I had an ultrasound of my abdomen the other day for an unrelated issue and it turns out there’s some mild fatty tissue around my liver (blood readings ok though). My doctor has prescribed Crestor – my train of thought is I’ve tried everything, and perhaps now is the time for the inevitable – to take the statins? Having said that, I haven’t tried any of the natural methods above – flax, beans etc.

I believe a few of the many good suggestions need further clarification:

1. There’s suggestions to eat more soy products (for more protein, which is good to get), BUT no mention of using non GMO soy (the vast majority world-wide is GMO) and no mention its not a great idea for aging men because of hormonal interference (worsens their estrogen-testosterone balance is commonly way off). Lastly, most protein mixes, like from soy, have way too much glutamine in them, which is a documented excitotoxin (see Russell Blaylock MD’s book Excitotoxins). We’re better off with taking essential and branched chain amino acids instead of most protein powders.

2. All the meats should be organic, since this reduces your uptake of many harmful environmental toxins that are stored in their fat, which cannot be completely avoided.

3. The recommendation to use less saturated fat and more healthy oils neglects the health-crucial differences between long and short chain fatty acids. Its not enough and potentially misleading to simplify this to only being about saturated, monosaturated, polyunsaturated and hydrogenated fats. Yes, we should reduce as much as possible the long chain, polyunsaturated and hydrogenated fats, and of those we continue to get we should emphasize short chain saturated and monosaturated fats. This means increased use of tropical oils (palm, palm kernal and coconut), as well as olive oil.

4. It is not good to eat any oils with high polyunsaturated fat content, which is very easily oxidized, which releases loads of free radicals which promotes heart disease, cancer, aging and nutrient deficiencies. Heating polyunsaturated fats increases their oxidation and creates the very toxic compound HNE. Polyunsaturated and monosaturated fats also will oxidize within the body. So its not a great idea to be using more sesame or nut oils:

Clearly, the only oils in the house should be coconut, olive and from the palm tree. The tropical fruit oils are the only ones we should be cooking with.

5. Flax provides great fiber, but many people don’t make sufficient enzymes to convert its oils to DHA, so this isn’t a great strategy for higher omega 3 fats. EPA is highest in most fish oils, but its the DHA we really need most of and that’s another enzyme conversion. Calamari oil has the most favorable EPA-DHA ratio and is ~10X higher in DHA than EPA.

6. I would add to the list avoidance/minimization of all environmental toxins. These are commonly acquired via personal care products (any chemical products that go on your skin and toothpaste), household cleaners, foods stored or heated in/under plastics, foods cooked or held in cast iron or aluminum, BPA-lined cans/cartons/water bottles, and yard chemicals of all sorts.

With adjustments for the above, I believe Dr Hyman’s to-do list is excellent and not just for cholesterol management.

PS I implied olive oil is not good to cook with compared to tropical oils – why? Because olive oil is only 14% saturated fat, whereas the topical oils are 50-92% saturated fats. Saturated fats are very difficult to oxidize.

Why emphasize tropical saturated fats in an article about cholesterol? Because they’re predominately metabolized as medium chain fatty acids, which are metabolized differently than the long chain oils. Populations which have historically obtained quite high percentages of daily calories from these healthy fats have nil cardiovascular disease. Red and white palm oils have very heart healthy substances such as squalene, phytosterols, tocotrienols, linoleic acid, CoQ10, carotene, and other carotenoids. Tropical oils improve cholesterol ratios.

Have been trying to lower cholesterol for the last two years, am 67, life style change and going to gym did not help to lower cholesterol!. Have been taking statin for two months now, next blood test is in June. My question is “Do I need to go on medication?” “Is it possible to stop statin after six months?”. would appreciate your help. Thanks, Bala

For more personalized nutrition advice, Dr Hyman’s nutrition coaching team would be happy to work with you on an individual level to help you reach your goals. To work with the nutrition coaching team please go to:http://www.bloodsugarsolution.com/nutrition-coaching/ OR call (800) 892-1443 to get started.
In Good Health,
The Nutrition Team

I am 68 years old, male, 6′ tall and 155 lbs. 3 Year ago I weighed 186 lbs.
as a result of a changed the diet and lifestyle. I look and feel great, BUT my blood pressure is still consistently way too high. A doctor prescribed ExForge, which helped, but after a couple months caused edema in my feet/ankles, so I quit taking it and tried 4 different kinds of herbal and ayeurvedic remedies, all of which had little effect and negative side effects.
I then read an article about sleep apnoea and how it can cause hypertension. One article recommended putting a tennis ball onto the back side of a Tshirt and wearing it at night so I would be forced to sleep on my side.
Wow! My wife says I don’t snore at all anymore, and I feel really good when I get up at 5:30 to start my day. My blood pressure has come down a little, but I have only been doing this for a week and I don’t expect instant results for a condition that took decades to develop.
Thank you Dr. Hyman for your service to humanity. I hope this little tid-bit makes a little sense.

In all this article there is no mention of RIce Bran oil. Where does this come in the scheme of things?

Also, what can you suggest for persistent high Systolic blood pressure (160 – 180) but normal Dyastolic BP (70 – 80). Cholesterol is normal but I do have VT which means heart medications to prevent sudden death!

Not smoking IS NOT a “simple behavior.” All of the others are mindbogglingly easy. It just kills me how people whine and moan at the prospect of changing their diet or getting more exercise, claim they just don’t have the willpower, but look down their noses and are downright hateful toward anyone who smokes. Quitting smoking takes, let’s see, about a million times more of the willpower that they don’t even have to pass up a single Twinkie.

I’ve just been informed that my cholesterol levels are above 300; I’m 49 and an alcoholic. I know that chronic alcoholism obviously leads to many health problems. Do you have any feedback for me? Also, I love your blog! Just discovered it tonight. Thank you.

I have worked all 2014 to get my cholesterol down, from 313 total, and ldl 241, I now have it at 222. ldl is 148, hdl 48, tryglycerides 150.
My CPR hs is fluxuating between 3.68 & 4.10 and I have been ruled out of having rheumatoid arthritis, but do have leaky veins in my legs, and mild arthritis in my hands.
I have been trying to avoid statins, but now am concerned of my CRP reactor levels being high.
any advise is appreciated.

Hi Cheryl,
Thank you for your interest In Dr. Hyman’s work. Unfortunately he cannot provide you personalized medical advice in this forum. In order to provide you the proper care you need we hope you will seek the attention of a local qualified Functional Med practitioner soon. To locate a doctor near you who practices functional medicine like Dr. Hyman, go to http://www.functionalmedicine.org/practitioner_search.aspx?id=117 and scroll down to where it says “locate a practitioner” and enter your location. Progress accordingly from there.

Thanks for your very interesting article with such pertinent information. Just one note: Red Rice Extract and Statins can both increase Lp(a)…perhaps more relevant for those who already have elevated levels.